I really enjoyed that thank you for sharing it.
You are obviously hard on yourself when it comes to criticising your work. I think that was excellent.

Wow we have some great writers in here. Fabulous stuff!

Heroine of Hever said

I’m sure I’ve mentioned before that my life’s ambition is to be a writer – and I say that very shyly, since I’m my worst critic! I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t writing stories. So, every so often, I try my best to write something about Anne; and I always feel so much responsibility weighing down on my shoulders to try and get her right. Here is an example of my latest story for you guys to read if you like; I’m quite nervous about posting it here but the way I see it, there’s no time like the present. =) Even now it isn’t quite up to the standard of how I’d like it to be – I would like to work on it more, but that’s because I can be a terrible perfectionist.
I’m already rambling too much, and I must shut up! XD Here it is – and I’m dedicating it to Anne herself. The dedication really does come from the heart. We love you, Anne, and we always will =)
xxx

~~~

I used to look up at the sky, and wish that it was as close as it looked. I wished it so much that it hurt. Whether it was the sky over Blickling, Hever, France… it was all one sunrise, one sunset, emotion, miracle: something beautiful that I could gaze upon and yet never be permitted to touch. Life, it seemed, was always like that, made up of hopes and wishes so dear that they might just break if you weren’t careful. And they did break. I still wonder, sometimes, what my life would have been if I had been allowed to marry Henry Percy. Thinking of it is like contemplating another universe, another self, a whole other strange existence. It is exquisitely painful, and quite pointless. It is like trying to catch a shadow with a net, like trying to scoop the reflection of the moon from a lake.

How did I get here? What point in my life was it that sealed my fate? There are so many answers to that question, like steps on a staircase, each one leading up and up into a dark abyss. But I was pushed up those stairs, I know that; cornered and riled like a lioness, shaken and put into chains. I first felt the grip of that collar from the very first day the king ever looked upon me and wanted me. It was a cold feeling, icy and hostile, tightening and tightening… and there was nothing I could do to free myself.

God knows that I tried to run. I believed that going to Hever, that putting distance between I, the deer, and the king, the hunter would settle matters. How was I to know that this would simply strengthen his interest? I thought that he would simply forget me, chase after some other girl and forget all about me. But no; he chased me. Sent me letters, sent me gifts. I would not submit to him, I refused to give up my virtue, I refused to surrender my morals.

And then he began to love me so well that I found myself beginning to love him. Fool that I was – I lost my heart to him, entrapped and encaged as I was. But it was exhilarating, it was exciting; at first I’d been scared, but when he told me that he loved me, that I was his equal and more in every way, that he was my devoted servant… I saw that he respected me, was in awe of me. It was no little thing. I had not been special to anyone in that way in such a long time, not since Henry Percy. I was special to the king now.

It was his idea, however, to make me queen. I begged him to go away and to find someone else. I pleaded with him, but he refused, told me I was the only woman for him. He declared that he would die before letting me go, and that no one would think it was my fault; he had been planning to divorce Catherine before he ever thought of me. And so it began. Perhaps if I had given into him then, I would not be as I am now. It’s ridiculously easy to think that now, but I know with all certainty that my conscience would never have allowed me to give in. I could never have suffered being called a man’s concubine, the king’s prostitute…

Little did I know then that people would call me both. I, who had gone to such great lengths to preserve my chastity. I, who burned with shame at the thought of my own sister’s loose behavior. I, who had always sworn that I would never give in to such temptations as she had.

Mary was never bad by nature, oh no, that could never be said of her; but her judgment was somewhat less than perfect. Of course, she is the luckiest of us now. Funny, to see that now, when it is too late to tell her; there are so many things I want to tell her… little things, stupid things… and important things. I want to tell her that I did love her, although we were so different in so many ways. I did love my sister, whatever anyone says. And although we were different we were alike too; we both loved and lost.

It was always George and me, though. It was never out of any unkindness towards Mary. Never. It was just how things were. Oh, George… George. My soul screams out whenever I think of him, which is every minute of every day. But we will meet again in Heaven, there is no doubting that. We will once again laugh and sing and we will be at peace, forever. The time will come. It isn’t long now.

I will be glad to join my beloved brother, but there are those I am unwilling to leave behind. One in particular. Elizabeth, my little redheaded Elizabeth, my precious girl. I am forced to leave her behind in an unfriendly world, a world of wolves. She is little more than a lamb put to the slaughter. I did all I could, before my arrest, to ensure that she would be placed in safe guidance when I am gone. I want her to be brought up as I would have wished; I want her to be educated as I would have seen fit. To face death with dignity, I must tell myself that I have done all I can and that she will survive. Elizabeth was born to be a survivor. She is my only living child and my last legacy, my greatest legacy, I am sure. She is a Boleyn: she can survive any storm.

Hope is the gift I will leave her. Hope and courage. I must not think of her as a lamb, but as an infant falcon. She will have to learn to fly alone, but I am certain she will soar. More than anything, I wish to leave her a letter, to have it smuggled out to her somehow for when she is old enough, but I dare not risk it. I must rely on those who knew me to tell her one day who I really was.

How will the sky be on the day of my end, I wonder? Grey and cold? Sunny and bright? One can never tell with May. It is a changeable month. The most I can hope for is that it will not rain. When I glimpse the skies before the kerchief is bound about my eyes, I shall make sure I waste not a second. I want to take it all in, to be alive for one last moment, to hope for one last grain of time. This hope, this time, will be fulfilled: I shall be at peace, after so long.

And in that very last moment, I shall remember. I shall remember it all. It was my life, it was my breathing body, my heart, my moments in time. Nobody can change that. Cromwell cannot change that I was alive, nor can my husband. Jane can sit in my place and glory in the estate that was once mine but she cannot obliterate my existence on this earth; none of them can. I swear on all I believe in… they can burn my portraits, destroy my emblems, melt down my jewelry, but no one can deny that I was indeed alive. I was alive in ways they will never be. My heart always reached towards the sky; I do not believe the same cannot be said of them. This is not bitterness on my part. I am simply stating the truth.

I am Anne. I am who I am, who I was and who I always will be. I am not the “adultress”, the “witch”, the “traitor”. My innocence will shine before God, and I dearly hope that one day I will be remembered for who I was. Judge my case kindly. The time will come.